After going 21 years without an update, the City of Moose Jaw's off site development levy is more than just a little out of date.  A consultants report Monday night showed the levy that helps City Hall recoup the cost of putting in new infrastructure for new land development, is charging less than half of the actual cost to do the work.

Consultant Dwight Mercer says based on the current $32,000 per acre, the city is actually subsidizing land development and giving developers an incredible deal.  He says Moose Jaw needs to be charging a lot more unless councillors want to make the decision to give a discount.

"The recommendation in the report is about $80,500 (per acre)." said Mercer. "We looked at actual tender prices and construction costs for sewer, water, roads and drainage and that was applied for specific areas in the City of Moose Jaw."

Then they took the average and came up with what the new levy should be and while it seems like a lot of money, Mercer says it's not cheap to prepare land for development.

Council has agreed to start re-writing the bylaw and approved a phased in increase to the levy to that $80,000 mark by 2020. For a new house, that works out to about $16,000 since your average home won't take up a full acre of land. As the bylaw is developed, there will be a chance for public input before it comes back to council for final approval.